The way she glares, not the way she smiles, is what tells Raijin he's in love. Seems crazy of him, feeling hooked and reeled in every time her burning red eye takes on that chill, strong enough to blacken him with frostbite, but he knows that when she glares at him, she's saying that she cares enough to expend her energy. Fuujin wouldn't expend the energy on him, bother to take his hand in private in the darkness of his dorm late in the evening, show her face in public with him outside Garden, if she thought he wasn't worth her time.

"Hey, Fuu," he says, and she glares at him with sharpened icicles almost shooting from her eye. If she could use both eyes, he'd be frozen to the spot, half-dead. Raijin gives her a defeated smile and goes on, "Hey, Fuu, are we gonna go do anything this weekend?"

She could say no; he's climbing out onto the slimmest, most breakable part of a limb by asking. He knows that Fuujin hates leaving Garden and getting stares. Look at the two of them, the Sorceress's Knight's henchmen, Seifer's cronies. Raijin doesn't care, but Fuujin does. She simmers with quiet, slow-burning hate with each distasteful glance thrown their way, although those glances break off her and shatter on the ground, deflected by the sheer force of her anger. Sometimes, Fuujin mutters, "RAGE," to herself, nudging at Raijin's arm, maybe even pinching the skin right above his elbow to cue him to start walking. He protests with, "Ow!" or a, "That hurt, ya know?!" Fuujin ignores him. It's in how she ignores him that he knows he wouldn't leave her for any money or any other possible reward in the world - even for the world to accept him as something more than an indirect servant to Ultimecia.

She turns her cheek to him, occasionally glancing back up at him with her eye to let him know she's thinking of him. Then she'll eventually glare at him again and say, "STUPID," ever so quietly. She lets him know that when she calls him an idiot or says he's stupid, she's worried about him. It's her way of telling Raijin, "I forgive you," though putting those words in Fuujin's mouth makes him want to laugh at the, well, stupidity! He's laughed before at the words that slip past her lips, totally unbidden.

Like the time, both of them alone in his dorm, reclined on his narrow Garden-issue bed with Fuujin's head tucked into his armpit as comfortably as possible, she said, "WARM. RAIJIN, FEVER?" He just laughed at her and wrapped his arms around her too tightly, till she snapped, "IDIOT!" and drew away from him. He just hauled her back and sat her in his lap, her back to his chest, without caring that she was stiffening like a grumpy cat about to hiss and spit and scratch his face to shreds. Fuujin settled down and was half-asleep when he told her it was time to go back to her own dorm for the night. "NEGATIVE," she said, but she went anyway, Raijin's laughter following her into the hall.

Or the time Raijin just had to make an ass of himself, choking on a glass of water at lunch in the cafeteria. Fuujin leapt from her seat like she was rocket-propelled and had pressed her balled fists against his chest before she stopped, realizing that the Heimlich was pointless, and slapped him around the head. "WORRIED," she growled, and she sat down again. Seifer sat and laughed his ass off at the two of them, not a care in the world. Raijin knew then that either of them would help him if he were in a crisis, but what was the point when he rarely was? He was more worried about Seifer and Fuujin, anyway. So he grinned at them, feeling like the idiot Fuujin always told him he was. But he quietly thanked Hyne just the same, glad that she'd make an ass of herself over a little bit of water down the wrong pipe.

"NOTHING THIS WEEKEND," Fuujin says. Raijin drops back into the present like he's been dropped into a tub full of ice water.

Raijin drags her close to him, into another too-tight bear hug, and plays with her long bangs. Fuujin slaps him and moves, fuming, to seat herself at the end of his bed. "STAY HERE," she says.

"All weekend, Fuujin?" Raijin asks. He tries to slide down his bed to pull her back up toward him, but all he really ends up doing is mussing up the covers so the bed looks like they have spent all day there, whittling away at the hours doing Hyne knows what - and only Hyne should bear witness to what Raijin decides he wants to do with Fuujin all weekend in this room, in this too-small bed. "That's kinda boring, ya know?"

"STAY," Fuujin repeats.

Obeying her command, Raijin stays still. She whips around to look at him after about two minutes have passed by lethargically. Then she slides her way up the bed to squeeze his bicep, about the same place she pinches him to tell him to get moving, except that this is a different command.

"Geez, I love ya, Fuu," Raijin says.

Fuujin glares at him and kicks at his shins - awkwardly, because she's positioned above him on her hands and knees now. And it doesn't hurt, because their shoes are waiting by the door, and her little socked feet hitting against his bones aren't going to do much damage. But Raijin doesn't care. It's the gesture that counts. "C'mere," he says.

He knows he really, really loves her when she obeys his commands. It's such a rare occurrence that Raijin is proud to know she'll acquiesce, get over her discomfort with physical displays of affection for a few seconds just to indulge him. An act of love, he wants to say, but he doesn't dare say it aloud lest she kick him again.

So of course, he puts his foot in his mouth. "Aww, you love me, ya know?" he teases.

Fuujin kicks him, this time at the side of his calf. "NEVER KISS AGAIN," she says.

Most of all, he knows that he is in love with her when she lies. Not three seconds after she makes that promise to herself, she leans in and her lips press lightly, very lightly, against his and her hands press nice and hard to his chest to tell him to lie down. She doesn't have to lie to him anymore, though; she doesn't have to talk at all. After all, her mouth's busy, and she can't glare at him when her eye is closed, can't be cold when Raijin's pretty sure that they are in a pleasant kind of hell, what with all the heat in the room. Yeah, he's definitely in love with Fuujin. She never has to say a word, shoot him looks, or make one gesture to tell him that she's definitely in love with him.

Love's one of those things you just know, ya know?